Freshmen

I'm a fan of the girl cast in the lead for one of the high school speech events.  She's talented, capable, and apparently a total jerk.  She's skipped out of multiple rehearsals without a word, so I contacted her mother, who apologised for poor communication and intimated it wouldn't be a problem going forward.  I responded, explaining that we had three rehearsals left, and she had to be at all of them, was this a problem?  Nothing.  

Imagine my total lack of surprise when she didn't show up to rehearsal today.  We made the shuffle to re-cast, which is sort of a hassle, but they'll get through it all right.  One of the kids announced that our lead had determined she didn't want to be there and hoped she'd get kicked out.  

I just can't even be mad about that.  I have to assume she's waging some kind of war where she thinks this choice is winning.  Yeah, you just show all of us how totally irresponsible you can be, upset kids you're going to have to keep going to school with for three and a half more years and put your participation in the event you like in jeopardy.  That sure does YOU a lot of good, kiddo.  

There's a tiny voice at the back of my head wondering whether or not this girl's mother was involved or not.  90% of these parents are totally hands off until they want something done, and then it's their kid's problem.  "Oh, whatever, no, you don't have any conflicts."  "What do you mean you have rehearsal every night until 5 like always?  I MADE YOU A DENTIST APPOINTMENT."  So, it would be really, really easy for a kid to invent a gmail or hotmail account for their parent, list it on the information then check that and fake emails.  

In which case, dang, kid, that's a lot of trouble to go to.  It probably didn't, but I acknowledge it's possible.  

You know when you watch Arthur, and you see one of those kids suddenly make up some hair-brained scheme that can only lead to inevitable, painful disaster, but seems like a perfect idea to the kid?  A lot of episodes of Arthur have the ability to look at that scenario and say, "OK, we can let this play out to its obvious inevitable end, OR, we can let it play out into some totally fucked up alternate reality scenario that may or may not provide any kind of closure, logic or consequences."  Which is, of course, the reason you keep watching.  The infamous Snowball episode is a perfect example of this- in any other kid's show, someone would have stolen the snowball, let it melt, confessed, gotten in trouble and been lectured.  But not on Arthur!  

This whole experience has been like an episode of Arthur.  I like it, but I kind of never want to do it again.  In a year, I will probably have forgotten this and do it again anyway.